We round up the most significant appellate decisions relevant to commercial litigation each week.

Welcome to the spring break edition of Commercial Roundup. This week’s highlights include a fantastic round-robin interview of six women lawyers who’ve made their way to the top of antitrust-world and the end of a saga about a non-lawyer who helped mass-tort firms “sign up clients” for money.

This week you’ll find me at the Spring Meeting of the ABA’s Antitrust Law Section in Washington, DC. Send me an email (bbarnett@susmangodfrey.com) if you’ve also come to the this year’s antitrust nerd-fest and either see an especially recondite, funny, or otherwise notable presentation or would like to say hello.


Continue Reading Commercial Roundup – March 29, 2023

Standard Oil Octopus: Past as Prologue

Stephen D. Susman, the founder of my firm and a titan in the antitrust bar, pioneered representing private antitrust plaintiffs on a contingent-fee basis.

Nobody knew better than Steve how to manage risk in antitrust cases — how to choose them, staff them, litigate them,

OctopusOn Aug. 12, the AAntitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice joined with the attorneys-general of six states and the District of Columbia to file a lawsuit to stop the merger of AMR, which owns American Airlines, into U.S. Airways. You can see the complaint here.

The filing took Blawgletter by surprise. Living in DFW, which

How can you hold down the cost of hiring the best talent?

In lots of businesses, the skill, knowledge, and creativity of workers make a crucial difference.  Those traits matter most on the high end of the high-end.  Think law, medicine, engineering, physics, computer science, rocket science, oenology, epistemology, and macrame.  The high-end could hardly exist without these

The attorneys-general of eight states plus the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice have settled antitrust claims against Visa and MasterCard over their restrictions on merchants' freedom to steer customers away from cards that carry high acceptance charges. 

They also sued American Express after it declined to settle.

The pact with Visa and MasterCard

Six of the world's biggest air cargo freight-forwarders have signed up to plead guilty to participating in international price-fixing conspiracies and to pay fines totaling just north of $50 million, the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice disclosed today.

Freight forwarders serve as the middle persons between outfits that have cargo to ship and carriers that can

China Airlines, Ltd., a Taiwan carrier, has agreed with the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice to plead guilty to price-fixing charges for air cargo services to and from the United States and to pay a $40 million fine, the DOJ announced on Monday.

The deal will bring the total fines the DOJ